plantlover: Drying of Sphagnum

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Drying of Spagnum
« Thread Started on May 6, 2008, 6:02pm »
Oh No! What should i do???? The Sphagnum moss of my ventrata is drying!!! Why???? No wonder some pitcher dried up! The soil is as hard as stone!



Its stuck together so I can uproot the whole ventrata!
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #1 on May 6, 2008, 6:07pm »
you can soak the entire rootball into a pail of water for 10-15mins until you see the moss are re-hydrated again before replacing into the pot. water more regularly / throughly to prevent this drying up from happening again.
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #2 on May 6, 2008, 6:16pm »
Thanks for the advise. I'll try it later.
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #3 on May 7, 2008, 9:06am »
oooooo, when soil dries up that bad, it's real bad for the roots. I've never had this happen to my nepenthes, but it's happened to some of my other tropical plants. The problem with the soil drying like that is that it's hard to rehydrate the soil since it clumps up. Like Hongrui said, it's best to let it soak in water for a while. I'd leave it in the water for half an hour, just to be sure. Hopefully your plant will recover quickly, but it may take an entire month for the plant to recover if the root damage was bad enough.

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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #4 on May 10, 2008, 5:06am »
Plantlover, how is your ventrata doing now?
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #5 on May 10, 2008, 9:25am »
Still haven't soak in water. Later in the afternoon. But its better since I water it everyday with a LOT of water.
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #6 on May 10, 2008, 9:26am »
And on the second ventrata that is a white thing like cotton or silk. Is it fungus?Its on the sphagnum not the nep
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #7 on May 10, 2008, 10:58am »
It's good your one ventrata is doing better. But it sounds like you have either spider mites or mealy bugs on the other. (Meally bugs look like clumps of ugly cotton and spider mites spin little silkish webs) Either infection can be devastating to nepenthes, or any plant pretty much. Most general insecticides and pesticides would likely work, but another solution would be to uproot the plant, then wash it off thoroughly before putting it in new, fresh soil. Just to check whether it's a mealy bug or spider mite infection, you might want to do a google search or send in a pic. The only other thing I think it could be is some sort of harmless soil mold, but that would only happen if the soil hasn't draining properly, so I don't think that's likely.
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #8 on May 10, 2008, 4:39pm »
I've soak them today. The soil still cling a little to the roots but soften and breaks up.
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #9 on May 11, 2008, 9:41am »
Could the white cotton thing be the white fly?Its very difficult to kill or control white flys.Almost all my plants are infected with white flyes.
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #10 on May 11, 2008, 10:01am »
I think it is fungus. Non of my plants are showing signs of infection only drying but it is recovering.
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Re: Drying of Spagnum
« Reply #11 on May 11, 2008, 11:40pm »
Oh, if it is fungus you won't have to worry too much. You might want to switch to a fresher, better draining soil mixture however. Something like pine bark or perlite would work well. Another benifit of changing the soil to something like that is that it that it won't clump up. You'd have to water it more tho.